1. Field of the Invention
The embodiments discussed herein are related to a data generation technology for electron beam patterning.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a lithography process, a mass production process that produces a large amount of semiconductor devices generally employs a photoexposure technology. In recent years, however, miniaturization and highly-functional feature of semiconductor devices have increased the number of elements mounted on a single semiconductor device and, as a result, manufacturing a reticle that is necessary for manufacturing semiconductor devices is becoming more and more difficult. The increases in cost and time for manufacturing a reticle are big obstacles to success in semiconductor device business. Then, when a highly productive photoexposure technology is used for mass production and an electron beam exposure technology that does not require a costly reticle is used for small-volume production such as engineering sample (ES), a work load for manufacturing a reticle may be avoided.
However, when different exposure technologies are used, resultant shapes of resist patterns do not coincide with each other due to a difference in physical phenomenon. This requires a change in condition and/or parameter in processes following the lithography process and, in addition, there is a problem that semiconductor devices will have different characteristics, or the like. For this reason, even for small-volume products, a photoexposure technology that requires a manufactured reticle is often used for manufacturing semiconductor devices.
To address the above problem, it is conceivable that a design data library for electron beam exposure, in which a shape processed by electron beam exposure coincides with a shape processed by photoexposure, is prepared in advance, a piece of electron beam data corresponding to the input design data is selected from among the design data library for electron beam exposure and replaces the input design data with the corresponding electron beam data to thereby generate electron beam exposure data. However, if such a procedure is employed, the pattern shape of design data for electron beam exposure becomes complex and, therefore, work for generating exposure data may possibly increase. It is an object of the invention to provide a technology for generating electron beam exposure data by which an increase in work load for generating exposure data is suppressed and the shape processed by electron beam exposure is approximated to the shape processed by photoexposure with a less calculation load.